When We Explore The Deep Sea, We Are Exploring For Our Own Survival

July 18, 2014 4:23 PM

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In 1953, on the heels of a discovery of a second coelacanth specimen in the Comoros Islands off Madagascar's coast, J.L.B. Smith, the man who described the species, wrote in the Times of London: "We have in the past assumed that we have mastery not only of the land but of the sea... We have not. Life goes on there just as it did from the beginning. Man's influence is as yet but a passing shadow. This discovery means that we may find other fishlike creatures, supposedly extinct still living in the sea."

Unlike the coelacanth, which was thought to have gone extinct, we have known for centuries that giant squid have existed in our oceans' depths. But unable to observe them alive in their deep sea home, we have understood very little about how they live, where they live and how they behave. That is, u...